The director has called for the Oscars to recognise his casting director,
Juliet Taylor, and others like her in an open letter

Woody Allen has championed the talents of his long term casting director Juliet Taylor in an open letter. Allen's letter was published in The Hollywood Reporter at a time when casting directors and their supporters are calling for recognition at the Oscars from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Allen, who has won five Oscars for his films, screenplays and directing, wrote that "a number of discoveries and careers have been launched by the energies and resourcefulness of my casting director" including those of Mariel Hemingway and Dianne Wiest and Meryl Streep "when she was a relative unknown" in 1979 film Manhattan, Streep's third movie and largest film part at the time.

"I’m particularly difficult in the casting area because the whole process bores and embarrasses me," Allen admits in the letter. "Juliet has forced me to meet and to watch the work of many new people and to hire people on nothing more then her strong recommendation [...] I owe a big part of the success of my films to this scrupulous casting process".

In July the Academy announced a new branch for casting directors, leading many in the industry to believe there was a greater chance there would be Oscar recognition in the pipeline. The documentary Casting By, which documents the history of Hollywood casting directors through more than 230 interviews and achive footage, has opened in New York on Friday after debuting at Toronto Film Festival 2012.